Federal Politicians parading around like their shit doesn’t stink are going to have a truly rude awakening this week.
Parliament House‘s cleaning staff have announced a week long strike in protest of frozen wages and the Government’s refusal to grant them a minor pay rise.
The strike commenced this morning and is due to last until Saturday morning, meaning the entire building will go uncleaned for the week, including garbage removal, bathroom maintenance, and toilet cleaning.
Parliament House is staffed by a team of just 40 cleaners, who are in charge of cleaning the facility’s 4,700 rooms. Currently, they get paid $21.10 per hour. Their union, United Voice, is seeking a pay rise of just $1.80 per hour, up to a rate of $22.90 per hour.
The ACT Secretary of United Voice, Lyndell Ryan, said the last straw for cleaning staff – whose wages have been frozen since July of 2013 – was hearing about the wildly extravagant expenses incurred by politicians, including the recent saga surrounding Bronwyn Bishop.
“To add insult to injury, we start hearing all the reports of politicians’ entitlements, we hear about ‘Bronny-gate’ and the general excesses around the use of their entitlements.”
“It’s really tough if you’re on minimum wage, or close to, to hear about how other people live, what they expect to receive, what they expect the public to fund, and then the cleaners to be left so far behind.”“(They are) the most powerful people in the country — if they can’t fix the cleaners’ wage, what hope do the rest of us have?”
Cleaning staff have already taken industrial action this year, staging a 24 hour strike in June. The fight for the pay rise began in the middle of last year.
Honestly, the last people you’d have thought the Federal Government would have wanted to piss off would be the people who literally have to deal with their shit.
But in the meantime, it’d probably be wise for all elected MPs to file a few expense reports for bottles of Domestos, and pray to every deity under the sun that the Parliamentary cafeteria doesn’t decide to take sympathy action by declaring it “Vindaloo week.”
Photo: Lesley-Ann Magno via Getty Images.
via ABC News.
